Pandemic 2 - Game Review

Pandemic II - Video Game Overview

The basic goal/mission of the game is to create a disease, virus, or infection that will become lethal enough to where it can wipe out the whole population of the world. In order to achieve this, the game allows you to make your disease, virus, or infection stronger and more resistant by upgrading the symptoms, resistance, transmission, and traits. In order to unlock new stuff that can help make your disease stronger, you must first attain some evolution points. These are awarded as your disease gets stronger and more resistant as it wipes out more of the world population. The more wipe outs, the more evolution points you attain. You must constantly keep an eye out for the world news for this helps with choosing certain traits you want your disease to have. This also allows you to be aware of certain natural disasters that can be of your benefit to increase population deaths. It is essential you look out for any vaccines or disease prevention activity occurring, because this will only slow down the growth of your disease. You can also sell back stuff that has been purchased that you feel you may no longer need. Be careful what you buy and when you buy it because it can be unnecessary and a waste of a potential resource.  

The way that I would implement this game into my classroom would be by using the California Content Standard for grades 9-12, Standard 3: Accessing Valid Information. By referring to the  standard 3.1P, students will be able to create a disease that is more lethal once they are aware of the health products and services available to the community. They can sue this information to create a more resistant disease. They will be able to also use the standard 3.2P to find other diseases that are related their disease and potentially pair up the two to create a more lethal disease. Something that I noticed while playing the game myself was that government agencies are first to respond when there is an outbreak of a lethal disease that is wiping out a mass population and is infecting natural resources such as, waterways, airborne, and food sources. This is where standard 3.4P comes into play. Students will research these agencies and find out more information about the vaccines that they have for the community. They can  also form a barrier around these locations with their disease or virus to where the agencies can not have any help coming in or out.

While the game’s main goal is to create a disease that will wipe out the population completely, I would use this game as a way to analyze what characteristics a lethal disease has and use the gathered information to find ways to also prevent the disease. This way, the disease can be contained if it were ever to get out of the hands of the creator. There have been lab tested diseases that have somehow found their way out of the lab and became very lethal diseases that wiped out mass populations. I would see how a parent would not like the game Pandemic II because the goal is to wipe out all the population. As a young game player, this would have been one of the games I would not be allowed to play by my parents. Just like any other game however, I would need to find the educational portion of it, in order to be an effective teaching tool.